Arkansas Blog

What else is new? Cheating in the classroom is old as mankind. And today the Internet makes it even easier.

"The [UA did not] directly address the question of whether it found or suspects others may have engaged in [cheating]."

Student privacy laws and all that. But rest assured that if others had been known to cheat, they'd have lost their eligibility, too. An athletic department's worst nightmare is to get crosswise with the NCAA and run the risk of losing scholarships.

Cato, you would usually be 100% on this matter. However, notice this young man's statement:

""Someone from Arkansas was doing papers, was doing me and some of my teammates' papers."

Almost sounds as if "someone" was furnished by Arkansas. In that case the entire season could be suspended. I'm sure a hand full of wigs are busy lining up any necessary scapegoats.

Why I'm shocked...school athletic programs doing WHATEVER it takes to win and one more 'athlete' who thinks cheating/lying is perfectly fine as long as the team wins. What is shocking is that this story made the light of day...especially given it involves the UA. I'd like to think this is progress...

This is a personal experience but from many years ago at the U of A. I was short on money and knew a couple of folks in the athletic department. They knew I made good grades in English. So I was tired as a tutor of freshman English for some football players. Basically I edited and critiqued essays, pointing out errors, before the players turned them in. One evening I went to a freshman hotshot player's dorm room on appontment. He met me with "Hey, write me an essay for class in the morning. I'm going to George's for a beer." He walked out. I lost my tutoring gig.

Sorry. That term should be "hired," not "tired."

What? Athletes cheat? No. I'm shocked, shocked and appalled.

What is shocking about this (and may tend to cause folks to wonder whether or not our collective legs are being pulled) is the insinuation that athletes at UAF have to attend class and go through the motions of turning in papers. I was under the impression that this was nothing more than just an old wives tale of sorts.

bluerthanblue,

It's not an old wives tale - students with good GPAs are hired to go to the classes of athletes and make sure they're at least in attendance. They receive a list of students with their pictures from ISIS and go to whatever class those athletes are supposed to be in each week.

I applaud Patrick Beverly for his candid interview. Indicates a level of maturity. Let's all hope he goes back to Fayetteville to finish his degree. Now, that would be a success story.

When I was at the UofA, from 1981 to 1985, I had friends on all of the sports teams. The "money" sports players, i.e. basketball and football, lived in the nicest dorm, had great food, in-house tutors, and "proxys" for class attendance who took their notes. The QB told me he never had to write a paper once during college - they were all written and typed for him. Of course, not all of the BB and FB players abused the system this way. My friends on the golf, running, swim (had one back then), baseball (not so popular back then), and tennis teams had to maintain their own GPAs and class attendance with no help from the athletic dept. at all - while forced to endure a much heavier travel schedule. I don't know how they did it and still graduated - but they did, some with flying colors and are very successful today. Cheating happens everyday in everyway, and the cheaters only cheat themselves.

A buddy of mine who is now a successful AD at a large high school in central Arkansas used to admit that, "At Arkansas Tech they give the football players their grades. And boy they sure gave me some shitty ones."

"One evening I went to a freshman hotshot player's dorm room on appontment. He met me with 'Hey, write me an essay for class in the morning. I'm going to George's for a beer.' He walked out. I lost my tutoring gig."

Sure. A spoiled, misled baby. But what about all the former UA athletes who've gone on to become physicians, lawyers, engineers, university professors, etc.? Like my friend, Dr. Joe Paul Alberty, a Fort Smith orthopaedic surgeon. I wonder who he hired to take his medical school entrance exams? I also wonder who, in his behalf, performed all the required studies and clinical work? Who stood in for him during his residency program? And who took and passed his board exams?

""Someone from Arkansas was doing papers, was doing me and some of my teammates' papers."

I hope someone was taking care of your English papers, because "doing me and some of my teammates' papers" is not really what i would call college-level English.

I had a wonderful doctor once upon a time who went to the UofA on a basketball scholarship back in the days before Eddie Sutton. Nobody really paid any attention to basketball.

anyway, he told me that the coach called him in one day and told him he was going to be tutoring 3-4 of the ......well, lazy other players.

So he did. At least at first he did. Then these student athuleetes quit showing up for tutoring. Coach calls him in once again. why arent you tutoring so-and-so, etc.? Because they aren't showing up. Coach told him if they didnt show up it was his job to go get them. He didnt think so.

anyway, the whole point of all this is that, when the other players quit showing up for tutoring and he refused to go track them down Lord knows where, when he had his own studying to do, he never once played in a basketball game again. He stayed on the team, he went to all the practices, he ran all the line drills, whatever -- but he never played another single minute.

and this was BEFORE the Hogs' basketball program took off with Eddie Sutton. Apparently now the "tutors" just do all the work and put the players' names on the papers.

sure, there are exceptions, like your friend Dr. Alberty and that basketball player from the Sutton era who went to med school.....I can't remember anything. I'll bet, though, that these guys are very rare exceptions to the regular standards, though.

College sports is a big-time business. college players arent student athletes, they are employees. They have no value except as a part in the machine that makes the big-time programs run. why dont we just go on and admit this and pay the kids? grades? Classes? forget it. Everybody knows what goes on, so why not acknowledge it?

Of course durango is quoting an exception to the norm by using his friend the orthopedic surgeon.

One of the bb coaches (Nolan ?) almost had a zero graduation rate. But what does it matter? For most mainstream sports the major players are going to get a pro offer and if they don't get seriously hurt they're handsomely set for many years to come.

Sutton's bb operation was noted for putting pressure on teaching assistants and instructors to inflate bb players grades. My ex wife refused to inflate a few of them so the players were quietly transferred out of her class.

Heck, I wrote papers in exchange for beer all the time for folks at the UA in the late 70s. Mostly short essays... no heavy research stuff. I imagine the jocks should be able to slide by like everyone else.

Those dad-gummed exceptions! They can be terribly "inconvenient truths" sometimes, can't they?

Old hat old hat old hat. Anyone who ever had a class with a Razorback football or basketball star knows the guy didn't have anything to do with the grade he was given. Ike Forte slept through the few classes he managed to attend. A friend of mine is an honors English professor at the U of A and nearly lost her job when she refused to shut up when she found out the F she gave a star athlete was changed to a C back in the home office.

Yes, I know these guys made millions of the U of A and all I did was spend a thousand per semester of my daddy's money. But what did this teach Ike Forte? And what did it teach me in those tender years when I was trying to figure out the way the world worked. I should have seen Cheney-Bush in our future way back then.

Like the dead Kansas abortion doctor, we can't cure this problem. It's been going on since the beginning of time and what Max and others uncovered at UCA goes on 100 times worse at the sprawling U of A. America is the best corrupt nation on earth and will never get any better unless our population learns to be a little more honest.

DUH! Intercollegiate money athletics!

An athlete's body is a terrible thing to waste . . . who cares about the mind. You don't have to read or write or calculate to play in the NFL or NBA; then you can hire someone to do it for you, like the athletic department did when you were matriculating. Of course, you have to hire someone you can trust!

The athletic department and college doesn't care, they got their three of four years of service, unless your turn them in for making a mockery of their stated purpose in the world.

I never thought when I was matriculating that "Go Hogs!" would turn out to be more of an epithet than a cheer.

"and one more 'athlete.."
zelda, in all fairness, it's reported when it involves an athlete. You don't believe only athletes cheat, do you?

Durango, Joe Paul is a friend of mine. We had a few history classes together. I would talk football with him. The only time he ever lost a yard carrying the ball is when we played Duke in the Cotton Bowl. He told me once that the A & M stadium was the hardest to play in.

Cato, I suspect JP has also told you that the best thing in his life is his sweet, smart wife, Coretta. Haven't seen her in years, but she was a beauty; a real knockout. I'm sure she still is.

I seem to remember a woman working as an academic advisor in the athletic department being fired for this maybe 10 or 15 years ago. Her father worked in some capacity in athletic administration. Who else remembers this? (last name Wood, perhaps)

You may be thinking of Rosemary Wood.....*grin*

I misremembered - it was FERRITOR'S daughter.

http://www.arkansasbusiness.com/article.aspx?aID=13728.54928.25851&view=all&link=perm

This could all be fixed by going on and declaring college sports as a money making mofo, forget student requirements and just raise the finest stallions money can buy and be content if they make big bucks for your favorite school.

Professional college teams would be just fine...because it's what we've had for years. Just go ahead and call a spade, a spade and be done with it. Then we can have students on one hand and professional college sports athletes on the other and go about our business without all this undercover money laundering.

I heard Danny Ford say with his own lips to my ears, that the U of A had given him 50 million dollars to produce a number 1 team and they didn't care how he went about doing it. That was back in the 90s when 50 million was a lot of money!

And on that subject...I read the other day that due to the effects of the Cheney-Bush economy, 500 million is the new 10 billion. Being rich ain't for the squeamish these days....

Adding to the difficulty of striking the right balances is a factor recently mentioned by Utah State A.D. Scott Barnes:

"Athletics are the front porch of the university. It's not the most important room in the house, but it's the most visible...."

I guess the question (to which I have no answers) is "So what? . . ."

Memphis, Michigan State, Louisville . . . Gonzaga, for goodness sake . . . could they *buy,* at any price, the kind of brand recognition they get each March? And does that impact notoriously peer-conscious 18 year old non-athletes deciding where to go to school -- or deciding which schools are cool enough for their friends?

I don't know; it was all a lifetime ago for me, and that stuff doesn't matter to my kid -- she's headed to a women's college that doesn't give athletic scholarships. I do remember, at 18, entertaining the remarkably confused thought that UA is better than Arkansas State is better than UCA is better than Arkansas Tech is better than Hendrix --- based on nothing more than athletic successes and level of competition. But then, I was a first-generation college student.

Maybe it just doesn't matter very much what passersby think of the front porch, so long as those who come in find what they came for in other rooms.

TAP, like any good lawyer, you've made a great closing argument.

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